THE HAGUE: Former Serbian president Mr Milan Milutinovic was flown to the war crimes court in The Hague yesterday in an early victory for prosecutors in their battle to get Balkan governments to hand over a dozen highly-placed fugitives.
Mr Milutinovic, charged along with Mr Slobodan Milosevic with crimes against humanity in Kosovo, arrived in this rainswept city by Yugoslav government plane.
The arrival of the highest-profile indictee since Mr Milosevic two years ago was decidedly low-key, marked only by the circles around the court building and detention centre of a blue Dutch police helicopter.
"He's arrived at the detention unit, that's all I can say," said a Tribunal spokeswoman.
Mr Milutinovic was reportedly keen to surrender: Despite his high position, he has long argued that he had no control over either army or police units during the Kosovo war. Although he sat on Mr Milosevic's supreme defence council, which ordered the ethnic cleansing of the province during NATO air strikes, Mr Milutinovic hopes he can get a light sentence by persuading judges he had little personal involvement.
But behind the scenes, Hague prosecutors are already focusing on other fugitives, charged with war crimes but still living freely, who are being sheltered by Croatia and Serbia. Prosecutors, having tasted blood with Mr Milutinovic, are determined to get them. Of the two nations, Serbia is the worst offender.
Among 11 men indicted for war crimes but living freely in Belgrade is Gen Ratko Mladic, now top of the most wanted list - this gruff spoken commander is accused of the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, the murder of 7,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995. Many of the rest include key army top brass, protected, as is Gen Mladic, by army officer bodyguards.
Croatia is also in the Hague's gunsights because it is refusing to surrender its 83-year-old former army commander, Gen Janko Bobetko, who is accused of masterminding the slaughter of Serb civilians in 1993. A second general, Ante Gotovina, indicted for killing 150 Serb civilians in Operation Storm, Croatia's biggest offensive of the war, also remains free.
Both Croatia and Serbia complain that arresting their fugitives will mean antagonising the nationalists, who are again flexing their muscles as the new democratic regimes struggle to stabilise economies shattered by war.
But the Hague is determined to get its men, and this weekend came news that it will be able to deploy a powerful weapon, when Washington signalled that sanctions may be used against regimes refusing to comply.
Each year, US congress votes on March 31st on whether to allow aid payments to both countries, a vote that is conditional on Belgrade and Zagreb co-operating on war crimes. The aid is likely to be cut this year without a mass handover of indictees - and the UN and EU are likely to follow any US lead in cutting aid payments.
Belgrade's hope that handing over Mr Milutinovic would buy it some time appears to be dashed: Officials here in The Hague say the clock is ticking and they want all the indictees handed over.
Piling on the pressure, President George Bush's war crimes envoy Mr Pierre-Richard Prosper will this week tour the Balkans, spelling out to Balkan governments that aid payments will be slashed unless suspects are given up. A similar threat in 2001 saw Serbia surrender Mr Milosevic, the regime biting its lip for several weeks afterwards as it waited for the reaction of nationalist opinion.
Now, once more, Belgrade and Zagreb face the choice between losing aid and arresting key generals which could create a nationalist backlash. Worst of all, they must make the choice quickly - US congress meets in less than two months. For the Balkans, the squeeze is on.